Tzero adds new investor for UWB product roll out

Tzero Technologies, a three year old UltraWideaBand (UWB) start up that supports the WiMedia Alliance variant of the technology, has taken another round of funding.

While it hasn't specified the amount this time, Tzero has added Miven Venture Partners to its roster of investors, on what seems like the same terms as its earlier $25.5m Series B round that went through in June this year.

UWB is inordinately expensive to develop, even for a fabless semiconductor firm, and we have seen how many set backs and political battles, which the industry's innovator Pulse-link has had to put up with. The difference is that Pulse-Link has over 200 patents in UWB technologies, many of which cover even the WiMedia Alliance approach, and it also has a thriving business in homeland security to support it.

So far Tzero has already had over $40m in funding and is targeting LAN distances for High Definition TV signals throughout the home, something that Pulse-Link already offers, with a technology that the WiMedia Alliance would like to marginalise by terming "proprietary". Pulse-Link's system already offers 1 Gbps versus the 480 Mbps speeds of WiMedia.

The new money at Tzero will be used to expand business opportunities and bring new products to market and as a result of the deal Victor Tsao, a founding general partner of Miven who also happened to be a Linksys co-founder and senior vice president of Cisco Systems, will act as an advisor to the company.

Meanwhile, Pulse-Link carried out a public demonstration of HD video transmissions using both 1394 Firewire and Ethernet being transmitted simultaneously over the same coaxial cable, at the Connected Home conference in San Diego.

Pulse-link is now pushing its ability to merge Coax and Wireless connections into a single hybrid network with the same chipset in either device. Pulse-link says it offers the only technology that can allow multiple simultaneous streams of High Definition content with "Trick Play" and interactive menus.

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